Shrimp curry

Last weekend I made a shrimp curry, to be specific a Mauritian prawn curry by the lovely Nigella Lawson. The recipe is from her book Forever Summer.

Because of the girls I didn't want it to be too spicy, but as the recipe only needs half a teaspoon of chili powder I thought it was safe to make. I have to admit that I have never made a curry before, but as I had most ingredients already I thought I'd give it a try.

Besides having never made a curry before I also had never cooked with curry leaves before, hence my mistaken opinion of this dish being not too spicy....

Apparently curry leaves make a dish spicy... and not just spicy but very hot if you throw in a lot more than the prescribed tablespoon. Of course I figured this out right at the end when the dish was finished.....

The curry was lovely, the flavors great but as was expected the girls didn't eat a lot...

They only ate white rice and sweet-and-sour cucumber. Off course this enabled them to eat a really big bowl of the chocolate mousse, so I didn't hear too much complaints!

Recipe

Mauritian prawn curry

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon kurkuma
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon chilipowder
1/4 teaspoon ground mace
a piece of fresh ginger (about 4 cm or 1 1/2 inch)
2 cloves of garlic
1 onion
salt
2 tablespoon of peanut oil (or something similar)
1 can of chopped tomatoes (400 gram or 8 ounces)
peel (zest) and juice of half a lemon
1 stick of cinnamon
1 tablespoon curry leaves (fresh or dried)
750 gram (1 1/2 pound) shrimp or prawn
grated nutmeg
a handful of cilantro
3 or 4 green chili peppers

Instructions:

Put the kurkuma, coriander, cumin, chilipowder and mace in a bowl. Grate the ginger and garlic cloves with a microplane and add to the spices. Add a little water and stir to create a paste.

Chop the onion and bake in the oil until soft. Add the spices-paste and stir-fry for about a minute.

Add the tomatoes, fill the can with water and add that also.

Add the lemonjuice, cinnamonstick and curry leaves and let this mixture simmer for about 30 minutes so the curry gets thicker and the spices more flavor.

Just before you want to eat add the shrimp to the sauce and cook until done. Taste the shrimp to make sure they are well cooked.

Pour the curry in a shallow bowl and add the grated nutmeg and lemonpeel. Put the cilantro on top.

Cut the chili peppers in half lengthwise and arrange them on the curry.

Off course, I left out the chili peppers completely because it was already a little bit too spicy!

Oh and you can make this sauce in advance and just add the shrimp when you want to finish the curry. It just gives the flavors more time to develop!